7 Days in Puer

The prefecture seat at about 1,300 metres opens the week — stone tea-horse road relics at the city edge, then a teahouse evening to calibrate your palate before the mountains.

1. puer tea horse road

Thirty kilometres south on Yingpan mountain, ten thousand mu of terraced tea with museum, rolling workshops and pick-your-own rows; the tasting room sets up the vocabulary for what follows.

1. puer tea expo garden

North to the caravan hamlet's stone track and century-old inn, then Ning'er county town, seat of the Puer prefecture from 1729 — the town that lent the tea its name.

1. puer nakoeli station

A four-to-five-hour drive southwest through Lancang county to Jingmai mountain, home of the Blang and Dai tea villages; settle into Wengji village's timber guesthouses for the ridge-top evening.

1. puer jingmai mountain

Walk the boardwalks through the old tea forest — five groves and nine villages inscribed by UNESCO in September 2023, the world's first tea-themed heritage site — and read the understorey farming that keeps tea under tall trees.

1. puer jingmai mountain
2. puer wengji village

A morning between Wengji's stilt houses and Nuogang's Dai village terraces, shrine trees included, then the drive back east toward Simao for a soft landing.

1. puer wengji village

A last morning among the tea markets and pressing shops, a bag of cakes wrapped in bamboo leaf, and the China-Laos railway — south to Xishuangbanna or north to Kunming — from Puer station.

1. puer tea horse road